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| Elaboration of a Visual Language. At the origin of Sequentialism in Art | |||||
Angelo Calabria in Art ACA ISSN 1127-4883 BTA - Telematic Bulletin of Art, January 22th, n. 971 https://www.bta.it/txt/a0/09/en/bta00971.html Article submitted December 24th 2024, accepted January 06th 2025, and english version published January 22th 2025 |
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Preface In this writing I have collected, as far as I have been able to reconstruct, the chain of events that have contributed to the birth of my “sequentialist” consciousness; which, at a certain point in my life path, has resulted, in the artistic creation of a evolved visual language capable to reflect the communicative progress of our digital age.
Earliest Memories (1978-1986) I remember well the first “signs” that fascinated me as a child: they were the slender shapes of cartoon spaceships. They stimulated me so much that – in the grip of excitement – I drew them, in front of the television, even before the program ended. Growing up, as a teenager, I took with me this instinctive passion that I found even more intense in the slender silhouette “arrow-shaped” of the most modern fighter planes. Contrary to what happens in most cases, it was not the passion for flying that involved me, but the fascination – for me at that time still undefinable – of those pointed lines that “following a direction”. At the same time, I also began to feel the mystery of the passing time. Objects like the clock and the calendar, with their recurring numerical sequences, could make me think of something absolute, beyond the contingent reality, a rational and “calculable” dimension that at that time I perceived as unfathomable. I don't know to what extent these embryonic experiences have contributed to my current artistic inclination for the spatio-temporal conception – the “count following a direction” – but looking back, I can't help but think that they have played a decisive role anyway.
The computer: from video games to programming (1986-2000) Around the same time I started attending art high school, I became interested in computers. In the beginning, exclusively as a playful tool for videogames – the novelty of those years. When I was sixteen, they gave me a semi-professional PC and I began to study its programming. I was literally fascinated by the possibility of creating programs and graphic effects from simple sequential lines of code: for me it was equivalent to the essence of creation. And, more importantly, this “sequential” language perfectly matched the design of Architecture, which at the time stimulated me enormously. But in the light of today, that was just a toy. The real breakthrough took place at the end of the university period (1997), when I began to interact with computers of the latest generation. A new world opened up for me, in which I decided to train my work: digital graphics. I soon realized that the computer skills acquired in this field were useful to me in the elaboration of the sequentialist grammar: they were two faces of one piece.
The stimulus of creation: in the beginning the Architecture, later the Art (1986-1997) From a young age I felt in me, very strong, the impulse to creation. In the period in which I had to choose which high school to attend, I saw in the “design-construction” the field in which to develop this vocation still in the making. Therefore, the choice to attend the five-year course of Architecture at the Art Institute was an obvious consequence. How much I loved, then, the great architects – Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright – who with their genius moulded imposing buildings from nothing. I felt spiritually related to them, especially with regard to the creative methodologie1: design. During those years, I did not give any importance to Art, I considered it an accessory, decorative thing, the opposite of the concreteness of architectural structures. This point of view changed radically when, studying for the examination of Master of Art of the third year, I discovered the Impressionists. It was not the particular aesthetic impact of their paintings that won me over, but the pictorial theory2 that supported them. It awakened in me that same sense of creation – but incredibly more intense – that I had tried until then only for architectural design. The flame that ignited at that juncture, however, lasted only the period of the examination – not yet having the necessary strength to impose itself. Only later, at the end of my higher studies, did I realize that what attracted me both of architectural design and of pictorial theory was the common creative spark: a force capable of generating an evolved linguistic gap, by which it was possible to increase knowledge and multiply experiences. I knew and had experimented, both at the Art Institute and at the Academy of Fine Arts, the various languages of art: from technical drawing to freehand drawing, from easel painting to installations; but none of these experiences had aroused in me a serious interest in the profession of the artist – in fact, during the years of study I had never, even for pastime, made something outside of school. I still didn't feel able to materialize my visions. I lived the art basically as a task entrusted to me to complete, that is without particular creative ambitions that went beyond the school environment. Everything changed in 1997, during the last year of the Academy of Fine Arts – the one I had reserved exclusively for my dissertation. There came the fusion between the two creative dimensions on which I had formed: the rational and methodical one of the first architectural experiences and the artistic one, more instinctive and tormented, that I had cultivated in recent years. Something happened then that changed my relationship with Art forever. I remember precisely that year, the thought of what I would do with my artistic experiences began to resonate in my head in an insistent and pressing way. But it was not a practical working thought in the field of fine arts. It was something like a voice, a distant echo very difficult to focus, that I was slowly trying to materialize in my consciousness. My interest grew exponentially. I tried to understand what Art was in the era in which I lived and where this renewed awareness would take me. I began a period of reflection, study and research that culminated in two events that would have been decisive for the future path I would take. The first happened when, studying for the last exam of Art History at the Academy of Fine Arts, I came across the image of a particular painting. It was as if something had reconnected inside my head. The thousand thoughts until then confused, from that moment found a clear and defined path. The painting in question was “Paulo dressed as a Harlequin”, by Pablo Picasso (fig. 1).  Fig. 1 - Pablo Picasso, Paulo dressed as Harlequin, 1924, oil on canvas, 130 x 97,5 cm., Musée National Picasso, Paris (France) https://deartibusblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/09/ unoalgiorno-picasso-paulo-vestito-da-arlecchino/ (03/08/2018) Courtesy of Angelo Calabria
What struck me was not the subject or the composition of
the shapes and colors, but the different areas of the pictorial
workmanship that was organized in clearly legible stages. This
feature distinguished this painting from all the others I had seen
until then. It was certainly not a revolutionary cubist painting, but
one of those intimate, familiar ones that the artist had made for
himself.
Some parts, such as the lower one and the legs of the
armchair, were just drawn with a light, nervous sign; others, such as
the seat and the Harlequin costume, were sketched and filled with
determination; finally, others, such as the face of the child, were
perfectly finished.
Thinking about this “succession” of parts, the
vision of an expressive universe full of possibilities flashed in my
mind, an original communicative dimension that was just waiting to be
explored.
The second event pushed me more consciously in this new
direction. One day, while browsing through an art magazine, I was
struck by an article about an exhibition in which some “unfinished”
drawings and paintings by Paul Cézanne (figs. 2-5) were exhibited.
The uniqueness of the event consisted in the setting up: the works
were placed according to a certain sequence that allowed to see and
understand the process of realization that had adopted the artist.
Crossing and analytically elaborating these two
experiences, which happened at a short distance from each other, I
developed a precise creative methodology: that spatio-temporal
sequentiality (still at the embryonic level, at that time) from which
all my future linguistic research would develop. The
Birth of Sequentialism in Art (1998-2000)
After school experiences, I could dedicate myself
seriously and with all my being to Art. As it often happens in these
cases, I knew inside of me what to do, but not how to do it.
I then decided to reorder my theoretical thoughts
through writing. I started to collect, in the diaries, the various
ideas and reflections that until then I had elaborated. Later, this
material would be channeled into the website and thematic
publications. Writing, on the one hand, helped me to articulate and
focus introspectively the various stages of philosophical-artistic
path, while on the other – in symbiosis with the realization of the
works –, helped to direct the “sequentialist” expressive
dimension outward.
To guide me on this path were – then as today – the
writings of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Of both, I was deeply
struck by the creative methodology and innovative approach to a
visual language capable of projecting itself towards original
expressive speculations at the expense of acquired communicative
purposes. Following Kandinsky, I began codifying a sign grammar –
increasingly complex and intelligible – that shifted significant
values from formal and chromatic aesthetics to spatio-temporal
elaboration. Klee, showed me the way to structure the sequentialist
language according to the guidelines of the organic “growth” of
the signs; my goal was no longer the expressive image resulting from
the genetic process, but the emotional readability of the realizing
sequential paths, direct incarnation of the creative genesis.
I was thinking back to my high school days, when I had
an instinctive attraction for the aesthetics of Piet Mondrian's
works, so close to the architectural concept that I was so fond of.
Now, all of this faded into the grand perspective of being able to
create something linguistically vast and organic, able to evolve the
known levels of communication.
Despite my artistic studies, it was only thanks to this
“creative vision” that I decided to dedicate myself to the
progress of Art in my time, in the absence of which, perhaps, I would
have settled for a job inclined to simple creativity.
Being able to materialize a thought, making it “work”
linguistically as a Work of Art, I think is the most difficult –
and at the same time most stimulating – task for the Artist
Creator.
A day like any other, completely taken by one of the
many theoretical problems that awaited an answer, my gaze was drawn
to something that unexpectedly struck me intensely. It was a “figure”
that I had seen and reviewed hundreds of times, but that now turned
out to be the solution to the linguistic problems that tormented me
incessantly. Well, what was this revelation? Simply the “floral”
decoration of a tile on the wall of my house (fig. 6).
From the analysis of this particular compositional
structure, I perceptively elaborated a series of spatio-temporal sign
paths, both regular and irregular, akin to the sequential linguistic
functionality that I was developing. Starting from this model, I
developed the sign-expressive coding from which the arrow-number
paths would have sprung, the alphabet of an evolved visual language
full of potential (figs. 7-10).
At this point, one thing was very clear to me: the
significant image had lost its monopoly in favor of a new content, a
content to be discovered and elaborated through a grammar of
spatio-temporal vectors, “created-counted” for each expressive
path identified.
In my eyes a new visual semantics was revealed, similar
to the digital reality that flows beyond the monitors that surround
us. Not the “simulated” aesthetic product of a familiar and
engaging reality, but the essence of the sequential processes of
calculation that generate that same reality through the screens. The
discovery of the code: The
Matrix
(2001) The
Matrix
movie, released in 1999, faces the dualism apparent reality / digital
reality. The machines control humanity through a digital
neuro-simulation – regulated in all its aspects by the “code” –
that recreates a familiar everyday life capable of hiding the real
and devastated post-nuclear situation. The story revolves around
different characters who move – connecting and disconnecting
continuously – between these two dimensions trying to free as many
human beings as possible from the domination of machines.
Two scenes in particular caught my
interest when I first saw the film.
In the first, the operator who
controls the flow of the code from outside the Matrix, reveals to the
protagonist that after so much time spent observing it, no longer
sees on the screen sequences of symbols in constant processing, but
can see, in their place, the simulated reality of the cities, streets
and people that the code recreates (fig. 11).
In the second – which is the
main scene of the film –, the protagonist becomes aware of his
increased abilities within the coded reality of Matrix, and acquires
the ability to “see” and “manipulate” the code to complete
his mission (fig. 12).
The Sequentialism in Art, of
reflection, generates a linguistic “vision” able to penetrate the
reconstructed reality that we see through the monitors, getting to
“manipulate” – in a spatio-temporal key – the code of signs
in order to create an expressive range of significant sequences
resulting from the symbiosis of communication between human and
machine. The
discovery of the philosophy of sequentialism (2002)
In those early years of intense research and
experimentation, the problem arose of how to define what I was aiming
for. Taking my cue from the concept of sequential phases, which I had
analyzed in the paintings of Picasso and Cézanne, I focused on the
idea of “project” (which was well suited to the technical-design
nature of my high school studies), and for some time I developed the
theoretical part on this premise.
I soon realized, however, that the concept of “project”
mainly indicated the embryonic phase of something to come. This term
could not describe the linguistic essence that I wanted to
communicate. So I thought about the expressive functionality that my
works should have: the sequential property. The
term “sequentialism” came to pass by itself. Who knows if
something with that name already existed. Google3,
search... here it is! I had found the philosophy of sequentialism by
prof. Achille C. Varzi4.
I immediately contacted him and explained the results of my theories.
He was intrigued by my work and sent me some of his publications on
the subject. Reading them, I immediately realized that the sequential
paradigms of this particular philosophical theory were well suited to
the spatio-temporal functionality referred to linguistic property of
the sign that I was working on. The
discovery of spatio-temporal content (2002-2006)
After a hybrid start, contaminated by linguistic
structures already acquired, I began to elaborate the sequentialist
semantic core. Proceeding both analytically and synthetically,
between theory and experimentation, I finally arrived (sometimes with
many efforts of thought) at the communicative essence to which I
aimed: the meaningful-expressive spatio-temporal content. I found
myself then – I had a clear perception of it – on the threshold
of a dimension that perhaps no one had ever crossed, penetrating
beyond this border. At
the beginning of my research I found, in the works of other artists,
elements that could have some relevance with the concepts of sequence
and calculation on which I was working, but explained, almost always,
in an elementary and limited way, that is, not linguistically
structured. I was aiming for something
syntactically and grammatically intelligible.
So what was this original content that I was trying to
bring out of my work? It was the lifeblood of the work: the
sequential-realizing path of the signs. Every direction that the
artist elaborates mentally/manually through the different graphic
sequences, can be followed-counted in the same way by the observer,
who shares in this way the feeling of sequential stratification that
slowly, sign after sign, allows you to access an evolved linguistic
dimension, today still difficult to understand in all its potential.
The sequential short circuit between gestures and
perception – which characterizes this spatio-temporal sign system –
generates a precise “digital” expressive matrix that, in its
infinite combinations in different directions, is able to reveal a
horizon of new communication possibilities theoretically unlimited. The
ability to “understand the number that is in all things” in a
sequentialist key (2007-2011)
To fine-tune this complex theoretical part, I practiced
for a long time, and often intensely, in order to refine the
particular eidetic-sequential ability that would allow me to “see”
and “count” the spatio-temporal directions – static and dynamic
– that reality revealed to my visual consciousness. It took many
years of intense concentration training to master this renewed
expressive faculty, in order to transform it into the visual language
I aspired to.
As I proceed in the elaboration for sequential phases of
a work, I feel a specific “stratified” sensation growing in me,
which is not linked to the external or inner result of what is being
formed before my eyes. It is a particular “emotional
spatio-temporal scope” that develops counting one sequence after
another, within specific expressive dimensions put into operation by
signs (arrows, numbers and units) and by studied pictorial sequences.
In the past, this energy-information guided me almost unconsciously,
while over time it became more and more clear until it became the
underground sap that today supports my creative practice.
I believe that for the Art of our era, the time has come
to consider the relationship between the Artist and Nature (external
or internal that is) as completely “defined” in all its facets,
and to turn our vision towards a new linguistic interaction: the one
between the Artist and the Digital Dimension.
The
problem of content
The spatio-temporal paths of the artwork convey
“sequential narrations”, (pictorial) discourses enclosed in an
original emotional dimension of the content, until now hidden from
our eyes and now accessible to our most evolved sensibility.
The more clear and readable these paths are, the more
direct and accessible the sequential sensations that guide us through
them will be (in this case we will have a category of artworks called
“Contiguous / Dimensional”). The more these paths are subtle and
structured, with an articulated legibility, the more the sequential
sensations they produce will be rich and indefinable (in this case we
will have a category of artworks called “Non Contiguous /
Multidimensional”).
These paths can be composed exclusively of single
directions that follow one another neatly, or from a wide range of
directions capable of interacting with each other – accompanying,
opposing, hindering, implementing, etc. – and able to create, as a
result, an unlimited range of stratified and complex spatio-temporal
meanings. An unclear and not immediate readability of the signs (the
linguistic “recognizability”), should not be considered an
obstacle to the content, but a further expressive possibility of that
particular path; possibility that leads to further significant facets
of the content under consideration.
You will learn to look at the referential or aesthetic
aspect of shapes and colors, no longer only as marks of a
recognizable expressive reality or a composition of sensitive
elements, but you will find that every single part traced –
belonging to an arrow sign, to a number sign, to a unit sign, and
consequently to one or more vector sequences – constitutes a
spatio-temporal junction to which to connect to access a new way of
experiencing, through Art, the digital reality that surrounds us,
vehicle of more advanced sensitive knowledge.
All my work, described in these first publications, aims
to make accessible that sequential spatio-temporal dimension – of
the real and the virtual – so peculiar of our communicative age. A
multilevel sign universe, able to reveal us further and infinite
spiritual experiences child of linguistic symbiosis with the digital
code. 1
Moving from the general organisation of [urban planning] to the
single building, the essential elements that must standardise it
have been effectively considered by Le Corbusier at five points: 1)
The house must be raised on pylons (pilotis), made of reinforced
concrete and therefore far from the ground, with the garden passing
under it. 2)
The garden must also be above it. While for centuries the roof was
built with slopes to quickly eliminate the rain avoiding
infiltration and, accentuating the inclination (in the northern
countries), also the snow, the reinforced concrete allows the flat
roof, rather concave, because subjected to the possibility of
“cracking” for the climatic changes, it needs to maintain a
constant humidity, with the only condition that the solar pavement
is protected by sand covered with thick slabs of cement at enlarged
joints sown grass; so, on the roof, the gardens will bloom. 3)
Since the house is built with reinforced concrete by means of
pillars, the function of the load-bearing walls ceases and therefore
the need for the walls of each apartment to insist on those below;
each floor can be structured by freely moving the walls. 4)
For the same reason windows can run from one end to the other, like
a continuous band, entering light and air. 5)
And for the same reason the facade is free, it can be advanced or
set back from the supporting pillars; it is only a light membrane of
wall or glass. 2
The great specificity of the impressionist pictorial language lies
above all in the use of color and light as the main elements of
vision. Most of the Western pictorial experience, with some
exceptions, has always been based on the representation of forms and
space. The intent of the impressionists is to reproduce the visual
intensity that is obtained from a direct perception of reality and
to do this they adopt the following techniques: 1.
use only pure colours; 2.
do not dilute the colours to achieve the chiaro-scuro, which is
completely absent in their canvases; 3.
combine complementary colours to enhance the luminous sensation; 4. never
use black; 5. shadows
are also colored. __________ Januarts, “The technical
revolutions on color and light”, In Impressionism,
28/02/2011, p. 2,
http://www.januarts.it/dis_arte/arte/TXT/impressionismo_schema.pdf
(08/11/2020). 3
Google LLC is an American company that offers online services, with
headquarters in Mountain View, California, in the so-called
Googleplex. Among the large amount of products or services offered
are the Google search engine, the Android operating system, the
Chrome OS operating system and web services such as YouTube, Gmail,
Play Store, Google Maps and many others. __________ Wikipedia,
s.v. “Google (company)”, in Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia,
last updated 28/10/2020,
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_(company) (14/11/2020). 4
Achille C. Varzi (Galliate, Italy, born 8 May 1958) is an Italian
philosopher. An exponent of analytical philosophy, in Italy he is
known mainly for his research in logic and for his contribution to
the rebirth of studies in the field of metaphysics and ontology. __________ Wikipedia, s.v. “Achille
Varzi (philosopher)”, in Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia, last updated
20/06/2020, https:/it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Varzi_(Filosofo)
(14/11/2020). |
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Contribution estimated by two anonymous referees in the respect of the scientific, informative, creative and cultural historical-artistic purpose of the magazine |
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![Fig. 11 - Jack Skoda. (05/09/2013). All I see is ... (The Matrix). [File video].
Tratto da: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-GTcHZkfCs (03/08/2018).
The Matrix. Regia di The Wachowski Brothers. Con Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne. Warner Bros, Warner Home Video. USA. 1999 - Cortesia Angelo Calabria](../../../../img/a2/39/bta03963.jpg)
![Fig. 12 - 30 Minutes movies. (28/11/2013). 30 Minutes movies: The Matrix. [Video file].
Taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPOXR4dXxDQ (03/08/2018).
The Matrix. Directed by The Wachowski Brothers. Cast: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne. Warner Bros, Warner Home Video. USA. 1999. - Courtesy of Calabria](../../../../img/a2/39/bta03964.jpg)
